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In some ways it's always sad seeing someone leave their job after so long, but Harada had worked for Namco for a really long time, though there are people in the industry that had been working for longer, some of them still are, but I've heard some rumors saying that Harada has some health issues, and Tomonobu Itagaki's passing probably made him reflect about his own health. Still, Harada was practically the face of Namco for a long time so he will be missed.
However, I wonder if there's going to be some changes in Namco, and I'm talking about the non-Bandai side of the company, since I always had the impression that after the merger with Bandai they don't develop many games as they used to, I mean, their usual big franchises like Tekken will probably continue without many problems, as well as the Tales of Series, they just announced a new Ace Combat, but I feel like Namco has a lot IP that have been abandoned for a long time, though I believe that part of the problem is that Namco was always more of an arcade developer, they were practically SEGA's rivals during the '80s and '90s and while arcade-style games on consoles were still popular during the PSOne and PS2 era, nowadays they no longer work, I remember Namco didn't have the same successes with new entries in the Ridge Racer series and Time Crisis on the PS3, and I don't imagine they reinventing old IPs, like Xevious, Mappy, Rolling Thunder, The Tower of Druaga, Pole Postion, Rally-X, Galaxian/Galaga, Valkyrie Densetsu, etc. Pac-Man is their only IP from the Golden Age of Arcade Games that people still remember, and only in the West, Pac-Man isn't as popular in Japan as he is in the West.
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